Paris-Orly, November 14, 2010

The physiology of you and me
sitting at the gate goes like this:

we are terminal.

                    *

A woman two seats over
speaks into her phone:
You’re someone else’s husband
and I’m someone else’s
wife if you want
to get technical.

                    *

Nov. 13. Hotel de la Gare du Nord.
48ºN, 2ºE. 3:34 AM:

          —We’re going to be fine.

         —Promise?

                   *

I find a book buried in my suitcase.
Vectors by James Richardson. I flip
through the ten-second essays,
pausing at the checkmarks
I don’t recall making.
34. Where I touch you
                   lightly enough,
there I am
         also touched.

                   *

We go to dinner after visiting
the Louvre. We barely talk. Full-
bodied Syrah swirls as I draw
circles on the tablecloth
with fine crystal. Light
reflects through, a purple
stain on stark cloth.

                   *

Remember when you told me You’re too easy—
shouldering the weight of your fingers—too easy to love.

                   *

Nina Simone plays
in the lobby. I think
she exiled herself here
and I don’t care if you don’t
want me because she could.
I’m yours right now. You, upstairs,
lie in bed watching the news
you hear me and I should’ve left.
I put a spell on you. The elevator
doors open.

                   *

50. Not beauty,
                   not even
         need.
We fall
                   in love
because we are
                            unused—

                   *

Your skin stretches over the muscles
that hustled their way into my bed—
bone and tissue, biology moving
through you. A single cell waits
for the axon to fill the gap, and I’ve
retrieved your message: You can’t get
blood from a stone. So I’m gone.

Eloisa Amezcua is an Arizona native. She recently finished her MFA at Emerson College and works in Cambridge, MA. She’s received scholarships from the NY State Summer Writers Institute, the Bread Loaf Translator’s Conference, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Workshop. Her poems and translations are published and forthcoming in Cider Press Review, The Boiler Journal, Printer’s Devil Review, and others. You can find her at www.eloisaamezcua.com.